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Re: E.P E. E.EXACT

From anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups comp.lang.forth
Subject Re: E.P E. E.EXACT
Date 2026-08-10 18:06 +0000
Organization Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID <2026Aug10.200610@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> (permalink)
References (6 earlier) <2026Aug7.121124@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <6a76b305$1@news.ausics.net> <2026Aug8.083201@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <6a777a5b@news.ausics.net> <115c7ii$30mpl$1@dont-email.me>

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dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> writes:
>As mentioned some time ago ANS-TC began with a very different scheme
>to what was eventually released.  Originally fp output was specified in
>terms of 'decimal places' - the industry standard.

I never heard of that "industry standard".  So I typed "decimal
places" into en.wikipedia.org, and the first hit is "decimal", and the
second hit is "Significant figures (Redirected from Decimal places)".
Funny industry standard.

>After the switch
>to 'significant digits' all references to PLACES were replaced with
>PRECISION.  But they missed some.  Here's what F. currently states:
>
>    12.6.2.1427 F.
>    f-dot FLOATING EXT
>            ( -- ) ( F: r -- ) or ( r -- )
>
>   Display, with a trailing space, the top number on the floating-point
>   stack using fixed-point notation:   
>
>"fixed-point notation" means *decimal places*.

You conveniently elided the stuff following after the colon, which indicates what they mean with "fixed-point notation":

|     [-] <digits>.<digits0>

No mention about "places" anywhere.  And the rationale says:

|A.12.6.2.1427 F.
|
|For example, 1E3 F. displays 1000.

Not something I would expect if they had decimal place in mind.

In any case, SET-PRECISION and PRECISION are clear: They talk about
significant digits.

>Unfortunately for implementers
>there are no 'decimal PLACES' to be found in the document.

What's unfortunate about that?

>It didn't help that
>there was no explanation as to how to apply PRECISION either.

PRECISION just returns the number of significant digits.  More
relevant is:

|12.6.2.2200 SET-PRECISION FLOATING EXT ( u -- )
|
|Set the number of significant digits currently used by F., FE., or FS. to u.

That's unambiguous, except wrt. trailing zeros.

>They went from
>proven technology to something that was speculative and untried.

?

Significant digits are neiter speculative nor untried, and were not
when Forth-94 was designed, either.  E.g.,
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_places> cites (reference 2)

| Chemistry in the Community; Kendall-Hunt:Dubuque, IA 1988

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: https://forth-standard.org/
EuroForth 2026 CFP: http://www.euroforth.org/ef26/cfp.html

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E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-05 18:02 +0000
  Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-06 08:13 -0500
    Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-06 14:00 +0000
      Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-06 10:45 -0500
        Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-06 15:58 +0000
          Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-06 17:20 +0000
        Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-06 21:05 +0200
          Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-06 20:38 +0000
          Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-06 18:44 -0500
          Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-07 11:03 +1000
            Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-07 10:11 +0000
              Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-08 14:39 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-08 06:32 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-09 04:50 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-10 20:01 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-10 18:06 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-10 17:24 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-11 14:01 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-10 22:10 -0500
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-11 04:56 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-11 22:16 -0500
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-12 05:47 -0500
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT peter <peter.noreply@tin.it> - 2026-08-12 18:03 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-12 11:48 -0500
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-08 09:14 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-08 09:40 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-08 15:26 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-10 16:43 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-09 13:43 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-09 07:19 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-10 19:15 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-10 13:17 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-10 22:59 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-10 23:54 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-10 20:42 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-11 17:10 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-12 14:04 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 16:43 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-22 15:47 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 18:27 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-22 16:40 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 19:42 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2026-08-22 18:03 +0000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 22:56 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT marcel hendrix <mhx@iae.nl> - 2026-08-23 00:50 +0200
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-23 12:25 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Hans Bezemer <the.beez.speaks@gmail.com> - 2026-08-09 14:52 +0200
            Re: E.P E. E.EXACT Krishna Myneni <krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org> - 2026-08-07 07:50 -0500
              Re: E.P E. E.EXACT dxf <dxforth@gmail.com> - 2026-08-08 12:33 +1000
                Re: E.P E. E.EXACT albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 17:01 +0200
          Re: E.P E. E.EXACT albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl - 2026-08-22 16:15 +0200

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